Keep the Faith: Billie’s Best Blog

Most of what I write is my mistake. Now I try to master the inevitable. I made a lot of mistakes. But from an experience perspective, I’ve found that recovering from a mistake is a process as fraught as the mistake itself. Often, when I mess up, my response is to apologize or delete, rather than thoughtfully considering the stepping stones to hell. This is where a lot of my mistakes were made. Bits and pieces of hell are etched in my memory for eternity. I have a list of them saved on my phone. Partly because they are stories worth remembering, and partly because they represent my greatest weaknesses. Just last week, I was looking for an old photo and I was reminded of a terrible mistake I made in the 1980s – the dress I wore to Tina’s wedding. I’ll add it to the list.

Mistakes made forty years ago are hard to correct, but I won’t give up on it because what I struggle with is the creative process and the tailor’s self. She made the clothes she wanted to wear. This is not what the bride wanted me to wear. But it’s a cool dress. Feel sorry. The revelation to me now is how we get so attached to the things we do that we stick to them at all costs, even if they are a huge mistake. I’m the bridesmaid. I was told to wear a cornflower blue dress. The dress I am wearing is teal because of the fabric chosen by the tailor. The dress was already half ready when I went to try it on.

This may not mean much to you, but when I showed up to a wedding wearing that dress, the bride wanted to stab me. Blood red suited her mood better than cyan. She hired a professional photographer to shoot the wedding and cut me out of the photos. Feel sorry. Feel sorry.

I regret all the mistakes on the list and that dress wasn’t the worst. But they definitely boosted my confidence in myself. After that wedding, I made a thousand stupid mistakes and I finally got good at correcting myself. Maybe it’s because I practice too much. Corrections aren’t always as quick as I’d like. But that’s what life is made of – mistakes and corrections. We all make mistakes. Individually and collectively. I forgive myself. I forgive you all. Now I need to continue the problem solving process. In the 1980s, I hired a psychiatrist. In 2025, I hired a book coach. Psychoanalysis is a strangely similar process.

Sometimes things that I think are funny are not funny to other people. Sometimes things I think are clever turn out to be half-baked and sometimes even stupid. Sometimes I get dark and the things that come out of me are depressing. I own this. The older you get the easier it is to see. I have a list on my phone to remind me. It’s much easier to understand how I screwed up Tina’s wedding forty years ago than it is to understand how I screwed up a novel written two years ago. Hence the book Coaching. I’m happy to report that it’s working. But it takes a lot of time. Perspective requires distance. Time is distance. It feels slow and impatient. This is my weakness. It’s more exciting to get over the stepping stones and fly by feel. Cornflower, teal – what’s the difference? There is a huge difference. In the case of my book, I had to change my writing goals in order to master them. I thought the goal was publication. Now I know the goal is mastery. I need to get better. But I have confidence.

I am confident that I will master writing. I’m just not there yet. It is lonely. There was no applause. The experiences upon which my ego rests are more subtle. To understand the process of mastery, I took a literary criticism course. Then I found a book coach whose critique I respected. She gave me the most thoughtful, detailed, and actionable criticism I have ever received. After that first hard hit, I stopped writing for a few weeks and wallowed in it. I then returned to her plan to rewrite my book and began the task. It’s been months and I’m not done yet. Of course, now I want to rewrite everything I’ve ever written. My sense of self is exquisite. I won’t be satisfied until I reach a higher level of mastery. Before long, I expected to feel defeated again. So, what I’m actually doing is turbocharging my hamster wheel.

This is how I keep faith in myself and you. I streak around the internet because I want to know that I’ve taken risks and survived; made mistakes and corrected them. Healed and injured. Injured and healed. This is how I build strength. Mostly, I’m made of scar tissue. I push myself to my outer limits and wait to see what happens.

Mastery does not mean perfection. That’s the speed of correction. We all make mistakes. This is how we learn. Individually and collectively, we all poop in our beds. Taking control of ourselves, our thoughts, and our actions can speed up the process of correcting our mistakes. I’m trying to improve myself step by step. We all know this, but I’ll say it anyway: the process is the destination. I want to get better at what I do. Fear and disappointment were waiting for me there. I know it. But the mastery is there too. As long as I keep the faith.